Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T20:37:18.849Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Multilateral Assistance: Possibilities and Prospects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Frank M. Coffin
Get access

Extract

This essay aims to assess the prospects of a larger role for multilateral assistance in world development. It does not attempt to review the familiar, often extreme, arguments made in favor of either bilateral or multilateral aid. It rejects the notion that the realizable possibilities of the many multilateral institutions and programs treated in detail in the other essays in this volume can be assessed as a unitary whole. The effort here will be to identify the specific kinds of multilateral aid which have especial potential of political support from aid-giving countries in the near future. As for the more distant future the reader is forewarned that the domestic politics of assistance, at least in this decade of stagnating support of aid of all kinds, recognizes no significant distinction between multilateral and bilateral aid. The web of will to help others develop is finely and infrangibly woven.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , Winter 1968 , pp. 270 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1968

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 A perceptive general discussion of pros and cons is that of Asher, Robert E., “Multilateral Versus Bilateral Aid: An Old Controversy Revisited,” International Organization, Autumn 1962 (Vol. 16, No. 4), pp. 697–719CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Development Association, 1965–1966 Annual Report (Washington, 1966), p. 39Google Scholar. In 1965 the total official bilateral aid and contributions to multilateral agencies to these countries was $6,212.2 million; in 1966 it was $6,431.7 million. (Development Assistance Efforts and Policies of the Development Assistance Committee: 1967 Review, A Report by Thorp, Willard L., Chairman of the Development Assistance Committee [Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1967], Table 4, p. 189, Table 5, p. 191.)Google Scholar

3 From an analysis of Development Assistance Efforts and Policies: 1967 Review, Table 5, pp. 190–191. The Development Assistance Committee is composed of fifteen OECD member countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany [West Germany], France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and the Commission of the European Economic Community (EEC).

4 Ibid.

5 For World Bank-led efforts see Roy Blough's “The World Bank Group” elsewhere in this volume. The Inter-American Development Bank has assumed leadership of such an effort in Ecuador. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development leads consortia for Greece and Turkey. Most recently, the Netherlands has assumed leadership of a concerted approach to Indonesian development.

6 The essay entitled “The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development” by Goran Ohlin, which appears elsewhere in this volume, contains a detailed historical account of DAC's efforts to achieve policy consensus on several key issues.

7 The distribution of IDA credits in the short run may favor some countries. For example, there is some indication that the United Kingdom's share of IDA-financed procurement has exceeded its share in contributions to IDA. However, projections of past experience are probably not a reliable basis for predicting the longer-range future.

8 Address by Irving S. Friedman, Economic Adviser to the President of the World Bank, to the Conference for Corporation Executives, School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, April 28, 1967.

9 Pincus, John, Trade, Aid and Development (New York: McGraw-Hill [for the Council on Foreign Relations], 1967), pp. 330–331Google Scholar.

10 See the discussion in Pincus, pp. 333–334; and Kaplan, Jacob, The Challenge of Foreign Aid (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), pp. 369–370Google Scholar. Despite an unenthusiastic report by the World Bank on this proposal both authors see merit in further consideration of its possible adaptations.

11 For a persuasive plea for the return of a significantly larger component of grant aid see Kaplan, pp. 310–319.

12 Development Assistance Efforts and Policies: 1967 Review, Table V.3, p. 76, and Table V.4, p. 77. The figures for 1966 show some slight improvement as to average maturity period and interest rate over those for 1965 but no improvement over 1964. And the United States Congress in 1967 took one more step toward hardening the terms of aid loans by doubling the interest rate from one to 2 percent during the ten-year “grace” period.

13 This figure is arrived at by dividing the World Bank's figure of $1,250 billion representing the gross national product of the economies represented by the DAC nations (IBRD-IDA, 1965–1966 Annual Report, p. 38Google Scholar) into the DAC figure of $6,431.7 million representing the flow of official aid in 1966. A lower figure, three-tenths of one percent, is derived if we take the estimate of official and private resource flows, net of repayments of profits and other income, of $4.5 billion and an estimate of $1,500 billion as the combined gross product of the developed countries. These are the estimates used by Friedman.

14 This is the figure if we estimate their combined gross product at $500 billion; their aid flow in 1965 was estimated at $500 million. (IBRD-IDA, 1965–1966 Annual Report, p. 39Google Scholar.)

15 Agency for International Development, Proposed Foreign Aid Program FY 1968 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1967), p. 75Google Scholar.

16 The way in which proposals to create institutions have generated their own pressure is similar to that described by Isaiah Frank in writing about the first UNCTAD:

When a responsible Western government is faced with a series of international meetings on an issue such as tariff preferences for less developed countries, it cannot simply send someone to sit on his hands. As part of its preparation, the government will reexamine its policies; it will react to proposals put forward by an international secretariat; it will often suggest alternatives; it may draw upon the resources of the academic community for analysis and ideas; it may sound out various domestic interest groups; and, increasingly, it will consult with other advanced countries in seeking a concerted position.

(“New Perspectives on Trade and Development,” Foreign Affairs, 04 1967 [Vol. 45, No. 3], p. 521Google Scholar.)

17 The New York, Times, March 29, 1967, pp. 23–25.

18 Ibid., p. 24.

19 IBRD Press Release, December 20, 1966, pp. 5, 6.